Add an option to mute individual people's smegas

Hello. I know I am forum banned however I am not banned in game.

For the past month or so a certain guild has been spamming vulgar smegas at each other non stop. They go on for hours and I can't be the only one bothered by it.
Now I don't want to have to disable ALL smegas just because these guys are bored, but for the past week I was forced to ~setting megahpone disableall every single time I played the game because of their excessive usage of super megaphones.

I understand that I cannot report them for harassment or whatever since they are talking to each other which is completely fine, but personally this is heavily disrupting my gameplay.
As a solo player isolated from everyone, the super megaphones are my way of keeping up with the community. The game is insanely quiet without smegas and I like them.

I know the staff can't intervene which is why I am asking to be able to mute them on my own, without bothering anyone else.
I do not know how hard it is in terms of coding. but the idea of ~setting mute xxx doesn't sound very complicated.

P.S-I know my post will have to go through moderation to be posted, but I'm not here to farm likes, just to ask for your help.


I don't want to have to quit the game because of them.

Thank you for your time.

 

Thanks for your feedback. If it happens again, please take screenshots and file a report. We'll look into it and take the appropriate actions.

As for updating the command, I'll check with Kevin whether he is able to disable mega for specific players.

 

I've had megaphones turned off for 2+ years now, but I guess that's because I mainly played an Islander. However, for the few times that I would unblock megaphones just to see "what I'm missing out on", I instantly regretted that decision within 5 minutes. On a side note, I hope that you're doing well! Forums aren't the same without you.

 

Don't worry you're not alone, and I also tried contacting gms about it. I think it's just low on their priority list because hackers/rwt/adding content affects game quality more than the annoyance of the smega spam.

 

This is feedback i cannot believe doesnt have the entire server behind. Theres a few groups of people currently playing who severely ruin the ingame experience right now. One group literally puts every thought they have and broadcasts it via smega, spamming their twitch channels over and over. Then you have an individual who thinks because they're gay they're allowed to spam homophobic slurs and use other distasteful, borderline obscene language. Gimme the power to mute individual players so i dont have to either suffer through the spam and slurs or blocking out all smegas making things feel more lonely

 

Aside from the very valid point that disabling all smegas can make the game feel lonely, doing so also means missing out on possible buying / selling opportunities, pqs, boss runs and leeching. As a bishop, boss runs and leech buyers are the reason I never even temporarily disable smegas whenever these spams are happening. They're an integral part of being able to play this game for a lot of people.

 

In the mean time would it help if we raised the smega cooldown? Maybe 2 minutes or 100 seconds?

As a serial smega spammer I am willing to take one for the team

 

Is it possible to create a deterrent? People only spam if they think they can get away with it, but if there's negative consequences they might stop. For example, just temporarily banning a few of the spammers would probably stop most of the spammers while a more permanent solution is implemented. Right now, it's not new people coming in and spamming, it's the same group. It's unrealistic to expect you to spend time constntly monitoring smegas, but if you set the precedent a few times, which won't take too much gm effort, it would go a long way. Any other deterrent would have the same effect imo. Consider it

 

Is it possible to hv smega bans? Where the ppl who abuse smegas like tat cant use smegas for a set time (few days - 1 month) linked to all their accounts?

 

Thank you for your response Kai.

I want to clarify, I do not wish to report them.
If that's their way of having fun in the game, I don't want to be the one standing in their way.
The flaws are in the smega system(which was just a way to milk money back in the day), but implementing smega rules is insanely difficult...
e.g - How do you differ between someone who spams when a friend levels to 200 from someone who spams when they are bored?

I think the least complicated solution would be some sort of command that allows the player to personally decide what they can see, or can't.

I have censored their names but you can probably understand the type of smegas I am referring to:


Once again thank you for your time and hard work, I really appreciate it.

 

This is the ideal solution, but the game doesn't already have a system in place to do this so the devs would have to spend precious time on this. That's why I think hand picked warning/bans is the way to go. The idea is not to eliminate, but to minimize spamming. The server size is small enough that you can have any admin temp ban, even for a few hours, and deter the vast majority of spamming as a temporary fix until the dev has time to implement the smega blacklist feature you guys are suggesting.

 

After consulting with the developers, this is probably something we won't implement due to performance reasons. Imagine we add the feature of allowing you toggle a player's smega off. Then everytime a smega is sent, instead of it being broadcasted to the entire server like it currently does without any extra checks, the server would have to check through every single online user to see if the person smegaing is in the list of their blocked user. So you can see how this will be a performance hit to the server and isn't something that's very feasible to add, although technically possible.

However we are aware of the situation and continue monitoring those players (whose IGNs you censored). At the same time we're exploring alternatives from a Staff perspective, such as adding a new clause into our terms and conditions for such situation, or a tool that allows us to mute them for a period of time as punishment, rather than banning them (but if they circumvent that mute by spamming on another char, then they'll be banned).

Although whatever they're doing (not sure if they're still doing it though) is extremely annoying, it's simply not ban worthy given the fact that each smega has a cooldown of 1 minute (this basically tells the player "Hey you can't send another smega until a minute later", which is basically what they did and it's acceptable), and the contents of the smega is nothing ban worthy (no hate speech, advertisement, hacks, unacceptable vulgars, etc).

If I missed out something, please let us know.

 

If you implement a smega mute, I hope you're able to target players with the mute because the type of person who would spam smegas like that would probably also get enjoyment out of making others not be able to smega.

As far the your statement on the banning goes, I think it's just a difference of opinion on how heavy handed you should be on these things and your view is within the realm of reason. Hopefully you guys figure it out and thanks for the hard work

 

Thank you for your reply Kai,
I believe you covered everything.

Is it possible to close the thread?

As always, thank you guys for the hard work.